Art Prints -- RF or RM?

[John Mitchell]

Images that might conceivably be used as "art prints" -- e,g. black and white conversions. Is it best to lease them as RM or RF (assuming they meet Alamy's criteria for RF)?

[Peter Jordan]

I would make it RM, then if someone wanted to make multiple copies for sale they would, strictly speaking, have to licence each one.

 

The recent story about the photographer who sold the picture of the field and sky to Microsoft, who used lt millions of times as Windows XP screensaver, but only paid a single fee, is an extreme example.

 

On the ther hand, when Microsoft developed the MS-DOS operating system for IBM, they insisted on a licence fee per use, rather than the single fee that IBM anted to pay.

 

Must have been the smartest thing they ever did.

[John Mitchell]

Good example of the perils of RF, Peter. I wonder if Novel Use covers print-making. I'm not in the NU scheme any longer, but it would be interesting to know.

 

I don't know if this means anything, but an Alamy search using "fine art print" yields 3416 RM and 1372 RF images respectively.

 

I guess this begs the question -- Has anyone ever sold a "fine art" print on Alamy? I believe that there is no specific RM licensing option for prints.

[Peter Jordan]

John,

 

So far no one has admitted to having licenced any images for fine art prints!

 

I tried searching "Fine Art Images" and got 5557 RM and 430 RF.  While there were many pictures of artists, there were also many images meant to be "Fine Art", so there are contributors who aim to sell that way.

 

One of the top landscape photographers from where I live is Joe Cornish.  He has an excellent gallery where I often go for a coffee and a look around.  The gallery offers beautiful prints of his own work, but also that of other photographers and indeed of painters and sculptors.

 

Joe has some work on Alamy, some or maybe all of it from work commissioned by the National Trust.   Certainly of quality that could produce an excellent print, if printed by a skilled printer.  e.g. B8Y3TA.   Another well known photographer that does similar work is David Noton e.g.BRAAM8.

 

I am sure that most of their sales will be for publication in books and magazines,  but I think that it would indeed be possible to make prints of their work and maybe undercut the prices from their galleries.